


personal stakes

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Intimacy, M/M, Post-Mass Effect Andromeda, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “I’ve got a good team and a lot of support,” Scott said, because it was true and he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without them. Maybe his fatherwouldbe proud of that.Reyes nodded, screwed his mouth up into an unpleasant grimace. “You do, you know. Have support.”





	

“There he is,” Reyes said—and of course it was Reyes, there was no one else Scott knew who’d barge into his quarters like this, no one except Sara and Sara was still recuperating under Carlyle’s thorough, vigilant care. He sounded far more jocular than his features suggested when Scott looked up at him, the tone of his voice at odds with the somber, searching quality of his gaze. “The hero of the hour.”

Scott groaned and threw his arm over his eyes, slouching even further into his couch. No, not his couch. His father’s couch that had, at some point, been hauled out of storage and brought here despite his protests that he didn’t need more furniture here and certainly not another article that his father had deemed important enough to bring. Everything in here belonged to Alec Ryder. This wasn’t Scott’s place.

Scott’s place was on the Tempest, but as long as they were on the Hyperion, this was home. And what a home it was, full of ghosts and memories and recordings that Scott hadn’t asked for or wanted. “An hour? Is that all the time I’ve bought myself?” he said, grousing, willing to play along for Reyes’s benefit.

If it made Reyes smile, it was worth it.

“Come now,” Reyes answered, bridging the distance between them with as much ease as Reyes always showed on Kadara. A nice change from the hunted way he skulked around the rest of the Hyperion, like he expected someone from the Initiative to drag him back to the Nexus. “All you did was defeat the kett en masse, jumpstart the ecosystems of multiple planets, and find humanity a true golden world to settle. Surely you can’t already wish to rest on your laurels?”

Lifting his arm a little, Scott peered, narrow-eyed, up at Reyes. It was a joke. Obviously. But Reyes spoke so earnestly that Scott could almost believe he meant it. Then again, Reyes had always been good at speaking earnestly. But once you knew that about him, the trick became less mysterious. “You sound like Tann.”

Reyes’s palm splayed across his own chest as he gasped with an unnecessary degree of theatricality. “You _wound_ me, Pathfinder. I am nothing like that—”

He’d already had one meeting with the salarian that indicated he was very interested in Scott’s next move. No doubt before long, there’d be another. And his question wouldn’t be so different from Reyes’s, even if Reyes was only giving him a hard time and Reyes wasn’t quite as diplomatic about it.

He rolled his eyes. Given the degree of flack both he and Tann caught on a regular basis, Scott couldn’t help but sympathize with him. But only a little. At least some people thought Scott was a hero; no one thought the same about Tann. The truth was Scott was just Scott. And Tann was Tann. And between the two of them and Addison, Kesh, and Kandros, they’d managed to accomplish something. That was worth remembering, whatever Tann was.

Budging over, he patted the couch cushion next to him. “Why don’t you take a seat,” he said, uninterested in whatever insult was floating around in Reyes’s mind for the occasion, “instead of looming over me?”

Reyes huffed and crossed his arms, but he spun around, too, and plopped indelicately into the space Scott had freed up for him. “I loom magnificently,” he insisted, stubborn. “You should be honored that I would choose to do so for you.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s true.”

The smooth skin of Reyes’s wrist caught his attention. Snagging his hand, Scott laced their fingers together, resting both against his own knee. The careful twist of Reyes’s smile took on a soft, inscrutable quality. Scott didn’t think too closely about what it might have meant. “Tell me more about it.”

“You’re mocking me,” Reyes answered. Airy certainty altered his pitch slightly. Tutting, he focused the brunt of his attention on Scott’s still healing knuckles, the bane of Lexi’s existence ever since he’d declined additional rounds of medigel treatments after she’d let him go free the first time. The scabs were gnarled and red, rough and ugly, surrounded by a sea of fading purple-black bruising. They pulled when he flexed his hand or formed a fist. They were, he could admit to himself, kind of annoying.

Maybe he shouldn’t have punched so many pieces of Remtech during that last battle.

There was only so much that biotic powers could shield you from after all. And Scott had more than met the wall where his skills ended and reality collided. He was toying with the idea of asking Cora to train with him. She’d come through the battle relatively unscathed and she knew quite a bit more about fighting with biotics than he did.

But that was a thought for another time. Now he was here, trying to relax, the newness of this particular situation still not quite setting in for him. They’d defeated the Archon. His sister was safe and his crew was alive and accounted for. Things were better. For humanity. For everyone.

And Reyes was here.

“Only a little,” Scott insisted, feeling a little soft himself. Being on the Hyperion—on Meridian—blunted his harder edges, let him remember what he was like before all of this happened to him, to all of them. There were so many things being a Pathfinder required of him that just… didn’t come naturally.

So he’d adjusted.

And it wasn’t always for the best, he was certain.

“Only a little, he says,” Reyes answered. “Funny words for a man who’s hiding by himself in the dark.”

Scott’s brows furrowed as he squinted at the ceiling. The light from overhead shone, bright white, directly into his eyes. Maybe Reyes had a point, though not the one he was trying to make. He could probably get those dimmed a bit. “You’ve got a strange definition of the dark.”

Reyes’s shoulders jerked in a quick shrug. “It’s a metaphor.”

“A _bad_ metaphor.”

Reyes sighed like he’d never in his life inconvenienced another person, but experienced inconveniences constantly. It was a harried, world-weary sound of complete and utter bullshit and Scott didn’t buy it for a minute. “But you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I know. You’re wrong, but I know.” When he sighed, it was the sigh of the righteously aggrieved. “I’m not _hiding_.”

Scott wasn’t quite sure why that distinction mattered.

Either way, he couldn’t bring himself to look directly at Reyes, but he saw Reyes’s head tilt in his peripheral vision. Reyes’s weight shifted and he leaned into Scott’s side. “A poor choice of words perhaps. You have every right to be alone if that’s what you wish. That’s not hiding. It’s retreating. Sensibly.”

Issuing a short, breathy laugh, Scott leaned back. “Alone except for you, right?”

“Of course,” Reyes said, just shy of arrogant. His awareness of his own status in Scott’s life was a source of pride for him and not, Scott thought, simply because Scott was a Pathfinder and there was a certain cachet attached to that, deserved or not. “I trust you would have told me to leave if I was intruding.”

That was true enough.

Reyes let go of his hand and wrapped his arm around Scott’s shoulder. The sleeve of his shirt sat, warm and soft and thin, across the back of Scott’s neck, the limb beneath it a comfortable, welcome weight. It was the kind of weight that could keep Scott upright if he needed it to and sometimes—sometimes Scott thought he needed that. Knowing the option was there was good enough most of the time.

Stretching, Scott pressed back against Reyes’s arm, his spine curving into the couch as he used Reyes as a convenient pillow. “You’re not intruding,” he said unnecessarily. It deserved to be said regardless. Scott had seen enough of Andromeda to know that you should take nothing for granted. Ever. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Reyes’s weight shifted again as he pulled Scott closer to him. “You say such complimentary things all the time. It’s enough to give a man a complex.”

“Uh huh,” Scott said for lack of anything better to say. Mostly it was easy to keep up with Reyes’s teasing, his flirtations, and banter with him, but sometimes… 

Sometimes it was easier to close his eyes and let Reyes wind himself up and back down all on his own.

And sometimes Scott miscalculated and underestimated Reyes’s perceptiveness. A terrible mistake given who Reyes was and how much he saw. Scott’s only source of luck—if one could call it that—in this whole thing was how little Reyes trusted himself about Scott. Reyes knew how to work angles, but he still wasn’t used to blind spots.

And Scott thought he’d been one of those ever since Reyes threw all his chips down in the hope of winning Kadara and—actually won Kadara. With Scott’s help. Or his complacence anyway. When he hadn’t considered Scott’s interference a possibility at all.

Reyes just wasn’t used to the kind of support Scott offered. Given the kind of man Scott was—not a smuggler, not a cheat, not a liar—perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that Reyes would wonder, especially when that not a cheat, not a liar _surprised_ him, too.

“Scott,” Reyes said, and he knew it was serious then. Reyes’s tone shifted entirely. Even his body tensed, becoming a less and less comfortable pillow by the moment. “What’s wrong really? I think something is.”

He asked it like Scott was made of spun glass. Or maybe like _he_ was the fragile one here and feared the answer Scott might give. Sometimes Reyes got that way, like he thought this thing between them existed on borrowed time and good behavior and that one wrong move would send it splintering across the floor, the jagged edges of it going every which way. But questions couldn’t shatter Scott and Scott wouldn’t shatter Reyes, not with words or actions or anything in between the two.

It was too late for that. Scott was committed now, whatever that meant. Eventually, Reyes would figure that out, too.

But how to respond? What was _wrong_? _Everything_ was wrong. His father was dead, his sister still in medical. They’d defeated the Archon, but pissed off Primus in the process. There was a missing ark out there somewhere and he…

There was no going back to the way things were. He couldn’t not be the Pathfinder, but now that he knew what that entailed, what it meant, what he had to do? The knowledge threatened to swallow him whole. The galaxy needed him, but he didn’t even know where to start in putting it back together. In a way, Reyes wasn’t wrong. Scott couldn’t afford to rest on his laurels, but he’d stumbled through this whole thing and because he’d succeeded people thought he knew what he was doing.

But the secret, the one thing he couldn’t bring himself to admit to? He still had no idea what he was doing. Without a clear goal, he didn’t have a clue. And that opened a chasm of uncertainty in his chest so wide he feared it would swallow him up one day. People counted on him, so many it staggered him. Even just knowing his crew looked to him for guidance was enough to speed up his heart a touch more than he was comfortable with, adrenaline shivering through his system and leaving him on edge.

That wouldn’t lessen. They only seemed to rely on him more the longer they were together.

And that was leaving aside everything he’d learned from SAM and his father’s memories about the Initiative and how it came to be, about what was happening back in the Milky Way. No, not was. _Had_. By now, it was all over. There was no way of knowing. No way of finding out.

“Scott?”

“Hmm?” If he played ignorant, maybe Reyes would get bored and leave him alone. It wasn’t likely, but this was Andromeda. Anything could happen.

“Whatever it is that’s troubling you,” Reyes said. His lips brushed against the side of Scott’s head, whisper light and yet still enough to wring a reaction out of him. Reyes’s touch always did that. “You can tell me, if you’d like.”

Scott’s eyes screwed shut and he wrinkled his nose. A sneer twitched at the corner of his mouth, eager to be let free. Telling Reyes was the last thing he wanted to do. It was a burden, what Scott knew, and one Reyes didn’t deserve to bear, too. He didn’t need Scott’s issues with his father or worries that not only the kett were out to get them, but something called Reapers, too, might be out there, lurking in dark space. Waiting.

He didn’t need to know that Scott woke up sometimes thinking Sara had died with the Archon and that SAM was gone permanently and he hadn’t succeeded. He _hadn’t succeeded_ and Meridian was just a mirage, a specter, a lie to chase, a trap waiting to be sprung. In those dreams, Meridian was a hopeless, pointless bauble, meaningless when viewed up close, devoid of utility. Another desert world devoid of life, the dry dust of bones its only legacy while Scott’s foolishness stood as its crowning achievement.

Reyes was a tight-lipped man. Scott could learn worse habits from him than that. Probably already had. That was what made Reyes so much fun most of the time.

“I’m fine.” His voice was steady and his features smoothed out to convey the same calm necessary to sell the line. He was fine. Everything was fine. This was just nerves and the need to get moving again talking. Once he was back on the Tempest, once he had his crew back—if they wanted to come back, once once once. Then it really would all be fine.

At least he might have a chance in hell of figuring out what he was doing.

“Are you?” The arm around Scott’s shoulder tightened, the index finger of that hand lifting to tilt Scott’s chin up and toward him. He kissed the skin of Scott’s temple and probably felt the brisk, violent pounding of Scott’s heart against his mouth. Teasing, he added, “If only we were all that lucky, then.”

Scott’s breath caught somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, his ribs squeezing tight against his lungs or so it seemed to him. Reyes spoke freely, forthright, casually truthful. It wasn’t that Scott didn’t recognize the tone, he did. He’d just never heard it deployed when Reyes was confessing to anything serious. And this sounded serious.

Twisting and hitching his leg onto the couch, his knee mashing awkwardly against Reyes’s thigh, he focused entirely on Reyes. He shifted again and resettled, a little more comfortable. “What are you talking about?”

He searched Reyes’s face for signs of distress, but he looked as steady and good-humored as he ever did. Even his eyes still twinkled. If Reyes hadn’t said what he said, Scott wouldn’t know Reyes had a qualm about anything. “Some of us are going to go gray because of you.” His fingers brushed over Scott’s jaw before dropping to Scott’s sternum. “And I’m pretty sure you’ve shaved more than a few years off my life with this last run of yours.”

“I thought you called it a party?”

“It was,” Reyes answered, slow and smooth and only a little bit strained. “A brutal, terrifying party full of more mayhem than was strictly necessary. We all need one of those in our lives on occasion, don’t we? Reminds us we’re not dead. But it’s not quite as much fun when you’re very attractive, very dedicated partner is spearheading the whole thing. Were you always this much of an overachiever or did you stumble into it here in Andromeda?”

“In a competitive family like mine?” Scott asked. There wasn’t a time he ever didn’t push his hardest, do everything he could. Babysitting a mass relay didn’t sound like much, not compared to what Sara had been doing—or his father or mom—but it’d still been an achievement to even get the appointment. “What do you think?”

“I think I worry about what this place might do to you.” And he spoke like it wasn’t that hard for him to say something like that. Which, given his ability to keep his mouth shut about anything and everything of importance to him under several different suns at this point, just wasn’t fair. “Andromeda.”

“It’s not Andromeda that’s the problem.”

“No, it’s the kett. And the Scourge. And these Jaardan, whoever they turn out to be. And rogue pieces of Remnant technology. And outlaws who aren’t me who might still be mad at you and want to kill you. And whichever Roekarr didn’t turn on Akksul. It’s a shame they’re all here.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Scott said, finding what humor he could in Reyes’s apocalyptic list of Scott’s enemies, “it doesn’t seem that bad.”

Reyes’s mouth pinched and the skin around his eyes tightened and he looked a little bit like how Scott imagined he did when he was forced to deal with some nonsense or other on Kadara. “Scott, I’m—” He released a long, afflicted breath and shook his head. “I can’t believe _I’m_ the one being serious right now. I’m not sure whether I should be horrified or proud of that fact.”

“You’re a complicated man. I’m sure there’s room in that brain of yours to harbor both of those feelings.” Guilt threaded through Scott’s conscience as his joke fell flat, landing somewhere close to cruelly irreverent. There was fear and there was being an asshole because you were scared; he was skirting dangerously close to the latter’s borders, poking and prodding at them with the toe of his boots. “Reyes, I’m just… doing a lot of thinking right now. I guess. I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about me. There’s just a lot going on that I’m soon gonna be responsible for. I have to be ready.”

“I didn’t think your shoulders were wide enough to bear the weight of all that alone.” Reyes’s eyes searched his face, honed in on every imperfection and insecurity he could unearth. Maybe he found none of them; or perhaps he saw all of them. Scott wasn’t sure, because Reyes didn’t react one way or the other. Instead, he remained neutral. “Perhaps that AI of yours has a few tricks I was unaware of.”

Like Reyes didn’t make it his business to know everything about everything.

Scott’s tongue darted out to wet his pursed-together lips. This was, he thought, his opportunity to get it out in the open. “I was never supposed to be the Pathfinder.” The words grated against his throat, the roof of his mouth. They could cut him into pieces if he wasn’t careful. “Sometimes I hate my father for forcing this on me.” He considered apologizing to SAM for the harshness of that statement. There was nothing except ungratefulness in the admission, true though it was. Then again, it was possible SAM had already realized and forgiven him for the uncharitable thought. “For thinking I could do this. Or for being too sentimental to not…”

 _Not do what he had to do_.

But no, that wasn’t right. He _was_ grateful. And his father _was_ a hero. And Scott would do everything he could to honor that sacrifice. But what he’d inherited? It was so big and he knew so little about any of it. Even his sister would have been more qualified than he was. She’d always been the more adventurous one, quick and relentless and fearless. She wouldn’t have gotten along with Nexus leadership, but she would’ve knuckled down on the ground and done her damnedest for the colonists anyway.

Hell, she and Peebee will probably get along once she was up and about and he was willing to bet they’ll bond over digging ancient shit up out of the dirt. Between the two of them, they’ll have the Remnant figured out inside of a month. How much more could they have done if it was Sara who’d woken from cryo first? Maybe then none of them would be in this mess.

Reyes wouldn’t look at him, his gaze finding the floor and staying there. His hands clenched into fists in his lap and his mouth contorted into a thoughtful and angry frown in turns. Scott waited, stranded in the middle of a sea of uncertainty. The only thing keeping him afloat was trust and the knowledge that whatever Reyes thought, it couldn’t be any worse than the fears that plagued him already and only seemed to resolve when he was in the thick of a crisis that needed resolution.

Too bad there were no new crises yet to distract him. Now all he could do was… stew. And alienate Reyes possibly. “Listen,” he said, because he was impatient and whatever Reyes was thinking couldn’t have been great or complimentary since he wasn’t blurting it out already and even if Scott knew it couldn’t be that bad, he still wanted it over with. “I don’t mean—”

But he had meant it was the thing. That was the root of his problem. And it was the one thing he’d never get to do anything about now. There was no going back in time. He couldn’t fight a ghost. All he could do was muddle through the present and maybe not doom the whole of the Milky Way’s most adventurous beings to death by kett while he figured out how to defeat them. Among all the other problems they’d have to deal with one way or the other.

A sound strangled itself in Reyes’s throat as he pulled Scott toward him. “Don’t say stupid shit,” he said, earnest, twisting so quickly that it took Scott a moment to realize Reyes was going to straddle him. Once he did, he pinned Scott with every bit of force he had at his disposal. “You’re better than that.”

Scott could throw him off if he had to.

But he didn’t want to.

Reyes’s palms cupped Scott’s cheeks, warm and calloused and smooth against Scott’s skin. And though it would’ve been easier to close his eyes than allow himself to see the anger and hurt in Reyes’s, he didn’t. His thumbs brushed across Scott’s mouth and were replaced by Reyes’s own. Desperate, hard, he kissed Scott, his body bending toward Scott’s. He kissed Scott until Scott’s lungs burned, until Scott nearly had to push him away, his heart thundering in his years, his throat, everywhere. Like the movement of his blood through his body was the only thing he could feel.

Reyes wasn’t a distant man by any stretch, not with Scott, not anymore, but right now Scott was wondering just how much Reyes held back on a regular basis. “Reyes…”

He pressed his forehead against Scott’s and rocked it back and forth in a gentle shake of his head. “It’s not a mistake that you’re here. I can believe a lot of about the cruelties of the universe, but I can’t believe that.”

A lump lodged in Scott’s throat. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said, quiet, abashed. His hands settled on Reyes’s waist and slipped beneath his shirt. He’d said too much—and his ugliest words, too, the ones that even he didn’t believe most of the time. “I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

Scoffing, Reyes seemed to relax a bit at that. He softened up and lost the hint of ferocity in his eyes. “That’s not true either,” he said, apologetic, hauling himself off of Scott’s lap to sprawl against his side. “Is there anything I can do?”

Reyes could do a lot of things, help in so many ways when he was inclined to do so. His more open policies in Kadara had already strengthened the Initiative’s chances in that system and beyond. And that was a good thing, a very good thing. But though Reyes had the skill and means to provide that sort of assistance, Scott couldn’t see him doing the same for Scott’s issues, not in any direct way. “You already do enough.”

“Spoken like someone who hasn’t put much thought into it. There is _always_ something more that can be done.” He crossed his arms and did something that he probably wouldn’t admit was anywhere in the realm of pouting. After a long pause and a lot of frowning, he looked over at Scott. “Do you want to know something?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t imagine your father not being proud of what you’ve accomplished here.” His gaze flicked to and away from Scott’s face in the span of a second or two. “However you and he felt about each other.”

It didn’t change anything, what Reyes said. Alec Ryder was still dead. There were still outposts to build and people to pull out of cryo. He still had to convince Nexus leadership that a threat loomed and he’d only bought them time to prepare.

But it helped. Hearing it from Reyes helped. _Believing_ Reyes when he said it helped.

“I’ve got a good team and a lot of support,” Scott said, because it was true and he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without them. Maybe his father _would_ be proud of that.

Reyes nodded, screwed his mouth up into an unpleasant grimace. “You do, you know. Have support.”

“I think that might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Scott could see the affront that Reyes was building as it happened. Manufactured as it was, it only made Scott want to laugh when he replied, “Now you’re just trying to insult me.”

Scott leaned into him, brought their faces close together. His eyes lingered on Reyes’s mouth. He was trying so very hard not to smile at Scott, Scott could tell. “I wouldn’t do that.” He pulled out his favorite shit-eating grin and winked and felt more normal than he had since before Meridian. “Did it work?”

“No.” But he smiled, too, and kissed Scott, his fingers brushing gentle across Scott’s cheek to tip his head the way he wanted it to go. “Of course it didn’t.”

“Worth a shot.” He grabbed Reyes’s wrist and brushed his thumb over the tendons that stood out just beneath the surface of his skin. He was comforted by the steadiness of Reyes’s pulse. “You know what would make me feel better?”

“What’s that?”

“It might not be Mount Milgrom, but I hear there’s a 634 year old case of Serrice Ice Brandy floating around somewhere on the Hyperion. We could liberate it. It’ll be just like old times.”

It was just a distraction and they both knew it, but that didn’t stop Reyes from indulging him in it.

“With an invitation like that—” Reyes pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand for Scott to take, ever the gentleman. “—who could say no?”

It might only be for a short time, but the weight of being Pathfinder lifted from Scott’s shoulders and he felt like anyone might when they made a plan to do something frivolous and motivated by silly, harmless selfishness. It was nice. He’d… misplaced that part of himself. All these months with his crew on the Tempest? He’d _forgotten_.

But at least for now he could remember.

Reyes let him have that.

Clapping Reyes on the shoulder and dragging him toward the door, he said, “Let’s go.”

With a laugh, Reyes followed, content for once to go where Scott led him.

It was entirely possible he could get used to that.

Maybe when this was all done—the kett, the Remnant, Jien Garson’s ominous benefactor—they’d have more time for this, for them. Scott would just have to look forward to that in the meantime.

It was a goal to work toward. That was all Scott really needed. One day, he’d have to thank Reyes for that. But for now, he’d just enjoy what Reyes had given him just by being here:

His own private reason to keep up the fight.


End file.
